Is it really necessary to have a contract length maximum AND a +/- 5% variance clause? There should really be no contract length limit - if a guy wants to sign for his career and never have to worry about it again, he should be able to. The 5% takes care of cap circumvention.

Mr. Colby wrote:Is it really necessary to have a contract length maximum AND a +/- 5% variance clause? There should really be no contract length limit - if a guy wants to sign for his career and never have to worry about it again, he should be able to. The 5% takes care of cap circumvention.

My take is because the NHL is guaranteed and the league still, with a new cba is running a tight budget.

Can create competitive issues with teams offering less yearly cash but 7 extra years.

Again, I get it to a point but I think the players still need to grasp that the NHL is not as valuable for most teams as other major sports.

Ok let me figure out a solutiuon for the contracts... Players can sign a one time (during their career) 9 year deal with a club all other times they sign has to be 5 yrs or less, after 37 yrs of age a player can only sign one year deals. A player who signs a 9 year deal, automaticly gets a no trade clause, you are glued to that team. But that players contract get a 10% cap discount. So a player who signs a 10 million contrat would only count 9 million on the cap. Only one player on your roster can have this 10% relief.

joopen wrote:Ok so the players want their contracts fulfilled. Owners say OK but we want long term labor peace. Players respond with LULZ

It's not that. It's the fact they can't sign a deal for longer than 7 years during the entire CBA. Some players want the assurance that they'll be set contract-wise.

So sign a new contract after 5 years?

The contracts are guaranteed. You want longer terms then let's talk about that

Honestly, how many players sign contracts longer than 7 years? Not many that I remember, mostly just some of the top stars. So they're holding things from going forward, hurting all the regular and lower ranked players. Do I have that right?

Mr. Colby wrote:Is it really necessary to have a contract length maximum AND a +/- 5% variance clause? There should really be no contract length limit - if a guy wants to sign for his career and never have to worry about it again, he should be able to. The 5% takes care of cap circumvention.

Kind of, yeah. It wouldn't be as bad as it is now, but you could still circumvent the cap by exploiting AAV vs years played. I could see where teams would sign a Brad Richards type of player who is 30 years old to a 12 year deal when he only plans to play 6 or so. Start him at 12 million, decrease it 5% every year.

The AAV (and thus cap hit) of that contract is 9,192,798, yet he gets paid more than that in every year that he plays hockey. The day he retires, his cap hit is off the books. Cap has been succesfully circumvented.

That's an extreme case, but it shows the potential to exploit by the rich teams with "superstar" players that tend to retire early anyway.

To me, and to others I've seen mention it, the solution is simple. No term limits. No % variance limits. Whatever a player gets paid that year, that is his cap hit. Retiring doesn't take it off the books.

Yes its less flexible. Yes its unlikely to pass from either side, especially the NHLPA. But its the simplest way to stop cap cheating.

Edit: Actually, I got ahead of myself. Retiring could take it off the books in this case. It wouldnt matter, as no cheating would have gone on in the early years. So its even simpler than I originally thought.

Last edited by beLIEve on Thu Dec 06, 2012 2:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.